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David Letterman signed off without a tear in his eye or a break in his voice. The final hour-and-change looked back fondly on some of the silliest highlights of Letterman’s television career and ignored most of the darkness that sometimes pervaded the legendary host’s broadcasts.

I might be a little biased, in that Taylor Swift is one of my personal favorite artists and Jody Rosen is one of my personal favorite music writers, but I can’t think of a better piece of pop-culture journalism/criticism all year than Rosen’s profile of Swift, which is on the cover of New York magazine this week and debuted on the Internet Sunday night. Here are three reasons this lengthy profile is worth your time – even if you’re a T-Swift hater. (Also, shame on you.)

Based on its pedigree and early reviews from the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals, I’m eagerly anticipating 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen’s much-anticipated new film about a free black man (Chiweter Ejiofor) who endures horrendous treatment at the hands of a ruthless slave master (Michael Fassbender). In an article entitled “Your Best Picture Winner Will Be 12 Years a Slave“, Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan writes, “A century from now, when they put together a montage about the history of movies? They’ll put the film we just saw in the first ten seconds of that montage.” If this movie really is the Schindler’s List of slavery, as others have suggested, all the better.